Japan has Made Console Modding and Save Editors Illegal

Japan is one of the gaming capitals of the world and it seems like they are leading the way once again with the way they handle people modding consoles and similar. Console Modding and Save Editors are now completely illegal and come with some massive punishments.

If you are found to be involved in either of these things then you could be fined up to 5 million Yen. That is around £36,000 or $45,882.07. That is a huge amount of money for simply hacking a console that you bought.

Services that offer the editing/hacking of save data, and/or modifying/hacking game consoles

These have been brought into law to also help discourage people from profiting off other peoples products. An occurrence of this took place very recently in that Soulja Boy has been accused of doing something like this.

This law also extends to all consoles such as NES/SNES/PS Classic consoles. If you were thinking of modding your classic consoles (of which the PlayStation Classic is now half price by the way, you are very welcome) then maybe you should think again. You should at least take a second thought if you are living in Japan.

If you didn’t know already, the PS Classic is actually very easy to hack. YouTuber RETRO GAMING ARTS has uploaded a four minute tutorial on how to hack the miniature console, allowing you “to use multiple save states, scanlines, change games to NTSC for 60 FPS and so on.”

If you’re interested to find out how, check out the video below but be aware you’ll need a specific keyboard to make it work.

These laws could soon be adopted by other countries so you might want to be careful!